


when you break

by writerforlife



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, healthy communication is key my friends, in this house we talk about our problems
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-20
Updated: 2018-06-20
Packaged: 2019-05-25 18:33:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14983097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writerforlife/pseuds/writerforlife
Summary: After the snap, after losing Bucky, Steve finally breaks down. Tony is the one to find him.





	when you break

**Author's Note:**

> Title is inspired by the song "When You Break" by Bear's Den, an amazing song that I listened to on repeat when I wrote this. I'm still not over the fact that Steve and Tony never saw each other in Infinity War...

Tony hates Thanos for the obvious reasons, sure. Making him go to space was inconvenient, throwing a moon at him was disrespectful, and stabbing him was downright rude. Erasing half the universe—including Peter—was worse. Much worse. Thanos could throw a thousand moons at him if it meant everyone who had turned to ash would return.  _ Peter.  _ If Peter would return. Even after weeks, he could still feel the ashes on his hand. 

_ Peter’s  _ ashes. 

So he thought about the un-obvious reasons he hated Thanos. Having to stay in a god-awful warehouse with the remaining Avengers. Being away from Pepper more than he was with her. Watching Steve Rogers skulk around in his righteous, grumpy funk and not being able to properly enjoy it. It was a distraction. He thrived off them. He was the king of distractions. 

Even the best of distractions couldn’t triumph over insomnia, though. 

Hence, strategy talk. Maybe less talk, more strategy observation or even strategy intervention. 

“Rhodey.” Tony poked at Rhodey’s shoulder. 

Rhodey flipped the map of one of Thanos’s bases on Earth over. 

“Rhodey.”

He waved his hand at Tony.

“ _ Rhodey _ .”

“Tones, I get that you’re bored. You’ll have something tomorrow if this goes right,” Rhodey says. “Go get Cap. I could use a second opinion.”

“You want  _ me  _ to go get Cap?” 

“You two can’t keep dancing around each other.” 

“Have you seen him? That man is as far from dancing as it gets. I’m not saying I’m the picture of cheer, but him?” Tony gives a low whistle. If skulking was a game, Steve would be winning with no competition. 

“I’m not here to psychoanalyze a hundred year-old supersoldier. Barnes said his name and dissolved right in front of him. That’s got to mess a man up. He’s a trusted military operative who I need to help me. So can you get him?” 

Tony sighs and stands. 

“You’re an angel, Tony.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.” Tony starts down the hallway, wondering who’s sleeping and who’s fighting demons as he passes everyone else’s individual rooms. Everyone else who isn’t  _ dust _ . He tries to imagine Peter among the remaining heroes. God, he would be losing his mind, all starstruck and irritating and endearing, especially in front of Captain America. Tony never did tell him the full extent of what happened in Siberia. No need to destroy the kid’s ideas of heroism and patriotism. Tony makes a mental note to introduce him to Steve when he returns—because it’s a  _ when _ , not an  _ if _ —before he knocks on Steve’s door. 

“Cap?” he calls. 

There’s a muffled sound behind the door. 

“Cap, Rhodey needs you. He misses his military buddy.” 

No answer. Steve probably isn’t sleeping, because Tony hasn’t seen him so much as sit in the past few weeks. He’s always planning the next attack, moving around the room like one of those wind-up toys that never die, leaping into battle without so much as a blink or thought of his own safety. He’s never seen a man with so many injuries and so little care for any of them—besides himself, maybe. Tony tries the doorknob, and when it twists without resistance, he pushes the door halfway open.

Then he stops. 

Steve is on his bed _crying_. Not even manly-tears-of-justice crying. Weeping silently, the tears streaking his cheeks. All six-foot-something of him is shaking, like he’s a frightened child. Like if he didn’t cry, the feeling would consume him. Tony’s been there more often than he wanted to admit. The bedside lamp’s dim light frames his trembling shoulders and bowed head. His head is bowed, but when Tony tries to close the door, he glances up, his eyes puffy and rimmed red. A piece of red fabric—a man’s shirt—is curled in his hands, one side tear-stained and darker than the other. 

“I’m guessing these aren’t allergies,” he says. “Runny eyes, the works, you know?” It’s the wrong thing to say, he already knows that. Is there a right thing to say when you walk in on Captain America sobbing into his dead best friend’s shirt? Walking in on him having sex would’ve been kinder. Then, he could’ve walked away and made jokes about it. 

Now, he has to  _ say  _ something. 

“Close the door.” Steve sniffles, sounding so much like a kicked puppy that Tony can feel something inside him break. 

“With me inside or outside?”

“Jesus, Tony, I don’t care.” He swings his legs onto the floor and sets the shirt to the side, but keeps one hand curled in the fabric; with the other, he tugs at the collar of his sweat-soaked gray shirt. 

If he wanted Tony outside, he would’ve said so explicitly. Steve was many things, but never shy with expressing when he didn’t want Tony around. Tony shuts the door behind him and lingers near the doorway. Silence lingers between them, the same silence that has stretched between them since they reunited to face off against Thanos. They’re on unsteady ground, Steve more closed off and serious than ever. Tony can deal with righteous Steve, old man Steve, hero Steve, but he doesn’t know how to deal with the shadowed, haunted man in front of him. Everything from the bags under his eyes to his beard screams TRAUMA. It’s a trauma beard. A trauma beard for a traumatized man. Where does he stand in all this? 

Steve clears his throat, swiping at his eyes. It doesn’t help. “What can I do for you?”

“We had a strategy question. How to invade an alien base, right up your alley.” Tony sits next to him on the bed, leaving a few feet between them. “But this seems more interesting.”

“What does?”

“You. Crying.” 

“I—”

“Please don’t say  _ I wasn’t crying _ .” 

Silence again. Where does he go from here? There’s no good way to say,  _ Hey, we’ve had problems since we literally tried to kill each other, and I’ve carried the shitty phone you gave me ever since. Now he’s gone and you’re crying and I don’t know what to say _ . Steve sighs and pulls the shirt onto his lap, not looking at Tony.

“We have better tissues than a shirt,” Tony murmurs. 

Steve bites his lip. “It’s Bucky’s.”

“Oh.” That’s something. Steve Rogers was crying into his best friend’s shirt—although Tony was growing more and more suspicious of the  _ best friends and brothers _ schtick day by day—in the middle of the night. What train of thought brought him there? 

“At least I’ve learned my lesson.” Steve laughs bitterly, a sound so far removed from the man Tony knew that he wonders if he’s the same person. “If there’s no body, keep searching. We all know what happened last time nobody looked for him”

“Rhodey said he dissolved right in front of you.”

“He called for me. Couldn’t do a thing. It was just like…” Steve trails off and screw up his eyes like he’s trying not to cry again. “I know what happened to him last time he disappeared right in front of me. I would feel it if he’s dead, Tony, but I don’t know if he’s safe.”

A lump rises in Tony’s throat. God, he’s felt that, about Pepper, about Rhodey or Happy, about Peter, even. But Steve—he’s talking about something else entirely. “The feeling about him being dead. Added perk of being a super soldier?” 

“No.”

“Glowing friendship bracelets?”

Steve’s shoulders tense. “I shouldn’t even tell you. You tried to kill him.”

“I didn’t have time to process it. But HYDRA killed my parents. Barnes was their weapon of choice, and I don’t think your boy had much say in it.” And Tony means it. He’s spent enough sleepless nights reading the files of what HYDRA did to Bucky Barnes; most ended with him throwing up anything he dared to eat or nightmares of electrocution, mind wiping, and every time a handler noted that Barnes was screaming for Steve Rogers. He hoped Steve never saw the files. 

“We were together,” Steve blurts. “Before the war. During it. After I got him back. Always.” 

Bingo. No national icon is complete without a secret. 

“I want to say I’m surprised,” Tony replies.

“But you aren’t.”

“It makes sense.” Tony moves closer to him, every flight-or-fight instinct in him screaming to run away. Steve limping away from him after Siberia, dropping the shield and leaving, still ends many of his nightmares. He fights logic (a situation he finds himself in much too often). “This a judgement-free zone and all, but why didn’t you say something?”

Steve rests his elbows on his knees, and suddenly, Tony can see all hundred of Steve’s years piled on his back, like a Jenga tower with one block left as a base. He may be physically in his thirties, sure, but the man’s fought in history’s worst wars again and again, and he just lost his boyfriend. That was a rough time for anyone. 

“You know that awful made-for-TV movie about me?” Steve whispers.

Not what Tony was expecting, but yes. He thinks he knows the one Steve’s talking about—and by thinks, he means he has it on his DVR and watched it whenever he wanted to make fun of Steve. “The one with the tights and the melodramatic monologues?” 

“Yeah, that one. Everything was wrong. Everything, especially him. Us. The scene where we fought over Peggy? We were  _ together _ . Me and Buck. He went out with girls, sure, but we had a reputation to keep. Hell, he was telling me to marry her. I told him to shove it.”

“You told somebody to shove it? That, Cap, is bad language.”

Steve chuckles weakly. “That damn movie made it seem like I was the responsible one and Bucky ran around getting into trouble. He got into his fair share of scrapes, sure, but I dragged him into it. But  _ I  _ fought men twice my size,  _ I  _ kept lying so I could join the military,  _ I  _ volunteered for the experiment that made me into this. ” He motions at his chest, face contorted like he’s trying not to cry. “And then there’s the books, and the museum exhibits, and the experts. They all make assumptions about both of us. About him. They think he’s some damn sidekick. Well, he was a sergeant and the best sniper I could’ve asked for, even before HYDRA got their hands on him. And nobody cares. People only care about him when it’s about me. Nobody wanted to know anything about us.”

“Steve—”

“What could I have said?  _ But I loved him _ ? Tell them that he was my first and only kiss?” All of Steve’s anger ebbs away as he raises two fingers to his lips, and God, if that doesn’t send a spike of pain through Tony. “No. Nobody wants to hear that.”

“Some people do. We would’ve wanted to listen.”

Steve shakes his head. “I prayed, I didn’t pray, I fought Nazis, aliens, but I can’t keep him safe. He fell. HYDRA stole him. He went into cryo. He dissolved. Right in front of me. I don’t know what else to do, Tony. How am I supposed to keep him?”

Steve’s voice breaks, and he’s crying again.

Tony reaches out, hand hovering near Steve’s shoulder, then freezes. He and Steve were  _ colleagues _ , even before Siberia. Not friends. But Steve is grieving, and he knows what it is to grieve, and—

“Screw it,” he mutters, and pulls Steve’s head onto his shoulder. Steve tenses for a moment, then he’s gone. Tony has a shoulder-full of sobbing super soldier, and even thinking that is like mental cartwheels. He has no idea what to say. No idea how to make it better. No idea if he should be going to find  _ literally anyone else _ instead of sitting there. Comfort has never been his department—money or sending Pepper in usually did the trick. But he’s here, Steve is upset, the worst that could have happened has already happened, and that’s that. 

“You know what?” Tony says when Steve’s tears slow. “We’re going to get your boyfriend back, and you two are going to take a bunch of disgustingly adorable selfies. Mr. and Mr. Captain America will conquer Twitter.”

Steve wipes his eyes and leans against the wall. “ _ Tony _ —”

“You two can have lots of super soldier babies—”

“That’s not how biology works.”

“ _ Babies _ , Steve. I didn’t say they had to be human. Get a basket of golden retrievers, for all I care. You can dress them up in that primary-color-laden first uniform and take them on walks. What a picture that’ll be. I can already see the Buzzfeed headlines.” Tony stands and starts for the door, ignoring the wet patch on his shoulder. 

“Hey, Tony?” Steve murmurs. 

“That’s my name.”

“Who’d you lose?”

Tony leans against the door, his chest tightening. Just like that, Peter was back. Begging Tony to save him. Saying he didn’t want to leave. Because he knew what was happening to him. “Someone I’d very much like to get back. My kid. Not like,  _ my kid _ , but… he’s my intern.”

“Your intern.”

“Technically. I look out for him. He looks out for me. He’s Spider-Man, actually. Keep that one on the down-low” Tony runs his hand through his hair, unable to look at Steve. “You know, he was injured once. Real bad. I was patching it up, keeping him semi-awake, and he called me  _ Dad _ . Do you know how that felt? And then on Titan, he…”

“You watched him go, didn’t you?” Steve asks quietly. 

“He was in my arms, and I couldn’t do a damn thing.”

Steve sits up straighter, his gaze intense. Even with his tear tracks and rumpled shirt, Tony would put all his money on Steve in a fight. He’d fought against believing in Howard’s stories for his entire life—he refused to believe one man would always make the necessary sacrifice, refused to believe one man would know what to do, refused to believe someone could be as perfect as Steve Rogers. A part of him clung to that. The other part screamed,  _ Steve Rogers will know how to fix this _ , and flooded with relief when he saw him return. 

And he knew he needed to get better at telling people how he felt.

“I’m really glad you’re here, Steve,” he murmurs. 

Steve jerks his head in a nod, the red shirt pressed to his chest again. “I’m glad you’re here, too. You’re going to save everything, Tony. I’m here to help. I’m here to get everyone back. Bucky, and your kid.”

Tony smiles to himself. “Goodnight, Cap.”

“Didn’t Rhodey need help?”

“He’s a smart man. He’ll survive. Our captain needs his beauty rest, though. I don’t think your cheekbones do that naturally.”

Tony shuts the door behind him quietly. Rhodey gives him a strange look when he reenters the room without Steve, then sighs.

“Tones, where is he? If you—”

“Not tonight,” Tony murmurs, sitting down next to Rhodey. “Losing Peter really sucks—and even that’s a fucking understatement—but I got really lucky, overall. You’re fine, Happy’s fine, Pep’s fine.”

“What did you and Steve talk about?”

Tony doesn’t reply, but takes out his phone, googles Steve and Bucky’s names, and taps images. One of the first that pops up is a grainy black and white photo of a handsome, dark-haired boy with a handsome smile and twinkling eyes, his arms slung around a deathly skinny teenager who Tony  _ never  _ would’ve identified as Steve had he not known. They were oblivious to the camera, only looking at each other. Tony makes a mental note to find the original for Steve. 

“He needs a night, Rhodey.” Tony stares at the picture, unable to look away. This is who they were before, the true origin story people wanted to forget. If he’d been turned into a weapon, turned into myth for seventy years, what would remain of him? “Let’s give him that.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! My tumblr is such-geekiness for anyone who wants to scream about Marvel or chat :)


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